


lost somewhere between the earth and the sky

by DoctorSyntax



Series: Femmes Damnées [2]
Category: So Weird, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 11:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorSyntax/pseuds/DoctorSyntax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fi's been dead for nearly a year when Jo shows up in her heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost somewhere between the earth and the sky

Fi's been dead for nearly a year, driving and driving and not knowing if the road ever ends, when she comes across a garden. The last time she saw anything on the side of the road she ended up in the nursery of her childhood home, an infant in the arms of her father on Christmas Day, beaming as he sang and danced her around the room. The time before that was her first kiss with Ryan, awkward and hesitant and perfect. She's re-lived most of her first hunt with Carey after leaving home for good; the day Jo called from Duluth and said _I need you_ and Fi drove nine hours straight to meet her halfway in some tiny town in South Dakota, mainlining coffee and trying to tamp down the hope blooming in her chest; a thousand tiny moments of her life, and all of them joyful. Parking the tour bus on the side of the road is only logical, even if she doesn't yet recognize what the memory will be.

The minute she steps through painted gate of the white-picket fence she feels a calm like she's never known. She's come across her fair share of ethereal beauty in the past year—memory always magnifies the allure of a place, makes it seem more than it is—but this feeling comes from without, more than just a trick of her own mind. It takes her a minute to place where she is: the huge, professionally landscaped backyard of Irene's sister's house. She's only been there once, a stopover on her mother's comeback tour, but it must have made an impression on her.

Fi knows, instinctively, that she's reached the end of the road.

Sunlight streams through small patches of fluffy clouds, warming the earth to the perfect temperature. Birds chirp cheerfully from indeterminate directions but otherwise there's a perfect stillness about the yard that Fi can't remember having existed in reality—it had been a beautiful but unhappy place, she remembered, inhabited by a couple too busy fighting each other to notice their little boy torn up by his personal demons.

Across the way is a figure she can't quite make out meditating cross-legged on the grass, and Fi takes a few hesitant steps toward it before she realizes the impossible truth of who it is. She only sees the girl in profile, but it's enough. She's spent enough time with her memories of people to know that this isn't one; this is something more tangible, more real, and anyway Jo's never been to this place before: Fi is sure of it. This is a place Jo shouldn't be, but somehow she is, invading the corners of Fi's mind and her personal heaven like she belongs there, and Fi supposes maybe she does.

She edges forward silently, as if any noise will spook Jo and break the spell that brought her, and takes in details as they come into focus. Sundress, stocking feet, no shoes. Straight back, straighter hair: this is not _her_ Jo; or rather, it's her and it's not all at once, like a dream made real. It's a notion that only reinforces itself when Jo notices Fi's presence and turns her head, because the smile that spreads across Jo's face as is so purely joyful that it can't possibly be real. 

Fi used to live for moments like this, when Jo looked at her like she was the answer to prayers she'd never even dared to say, but here the steady thrum of happiness in her chest is tinged with hurt. Their life together was not one of impossibly bright foliage, red and yellow flowers popping with color against saturated green leaves; it wasn't one of peaceful meditation in the middle of the day. Their life was dirty and exhausting and completely unglamorous, and Fi used to look at Jo and think, _if anyone was made for this life, it's her_ , but Jo looks as comfortable sitting half-lotus in the grass as she did fighting monsters in grease-stained jeans, and it hurts because this is a side of her Fi never had in life. She'd wanted all of Jo. She'd thought she'd _had_ all of Jo.

"Glad you're back," Jo tells her, like she's not surprised to see her; like she's been waiting for Fi forever instead of the other way around, and it pulls at Fi's heart. "I missed you."

She remembers now.

Fi dreamt this once—this exact scene, those exact words—and it made her go back for Jo when everything looked dark. This is another memory, a memory of a dream, so far removed from reality that it shouldn't hurt this much. But it's precisely that pain that allows her to hope for the impossible, for Jo to actually _be here_ with her, because in the land of eternal happiness a little bit of heartache must mean something more.

"I missed you too," Fi answers, swallowing around the stupid lump in her throat, but Jo's answering laugh is carefree, like she doesn't know sorrow or death when Fi's around. It reminds her: she's dead, and if Jo's here too, that means...

“How did you get here?”

“I took a shortcut,” Jo answers, and Fi aches with the questions she doesn't know how to ask.

Sometimes she used to look at Jo and see the hard edges of a child who grew up too fast; now, when Jo's so relaxed and open—a time when most people look younger—she seems, paradoxically, more mature. But most of all she looks so happy, so peaceful, and Fi wonders why Jo's bothered to wait for her. If maybe Jo would be better off without her. Like Jack and her mom, Maggie and Miranda: better off, safer, even if Fi doesn't want to admit it.

She opens her mouth, then closes it. Even in heaven, where she knows heartwarming memories lurk around every corner, she can't bear to send Jo away. She's been waiting a year for this moment.

"I've been waiting for you," Jo states simply, standing and coming toward Fi with one hand outstretched just enough to be a clear offer. Her light, full-skirted sundress swings around her knees as she walks, and that's new too. That's different. Jo's cropped red leather jacket is the only thing she's wearing that Fi remembers her owning—it was in the backseat of the Mustang the day Muriel took possession of Fi's body and walked her out of Jo's life; Fi still remembers seeing it in the rear-view mirror and wishing she'd thought a little harder before saying yes.

She hesitates in taking Jo's hand, because she (thinks she) knows what will happen when she does. "Come on, Fi," Jo encourages, cocking her head to the side and thrusting her hand toward Fi; a demanding little gesture that's perfectly _Jo_. "There's work to be done."

"But—" Fi gestures around them. "Don't you want to stay?"

"Are you kidding?" Jo scoffs, not unkindly. "Heaven's lonely. My place is with you."

Fi dreamt this once, and it made her go back for Jo when everything looked dark. Today it makes her reach for Jo's hand, warm with life even though she's fairly certain they're both dead. Fi hasn't touched anyone since she died: nobody real, anyway, and Jo doesn't feel like them. Jo feels real.

When she wakes up, they're back on Earth; the Mustang is idling on the side of an empty stretch of highway, nothing but night skies and open road in front of and behind them, and Jo's got the passenger seat reclined all the way back with her feet resting on the dashboard, sunglasses perched on the top of her head and a lazy smile on her face. Fi's seen so much of the country that she doesn't know if the familiar-looking surroundings are just another memory or if she's alive again—but the needle's pointing to full, there's a stretch of open road in front of her, and Jo's got her hand resting on Fi's thigh like it was made to fit there. It's still warm.

“If we drive all night we can make it to Tennessee by morning,” Jo tells her, and Fi grins like she's issued a personal challenge.

She shifts the car into drive, and neither of them ever look back.


End file.
